<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">In a message dated 9/26/2003 4:01:05 AM Pacific Standard Time, Jon Noble quotes satirist Patrick Cook as saying:<BR>
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<BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Parents toying with<BR>
calling the infant John are either indulging in a<BR>
congenital lack of imagination or naming the boy after<BR>
his father.</BLOCKQUOTE><BR>
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There's a ought-to-be-famous 19C novel (_Heartsease_, by Charlotte Yonge, infinitely better than its title might suggest) in which a character exclaims, of a newborn boy, "John! You might as well name him Man! It is no name at all!" Another of her novels has someone saying something like, "That means nothing, my name is John, everybody's name is John." <BR>
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Yonge subsequently wrote a history of Christian names, very interesting reading, though not always accurate.<BR>
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I was going to give my son (now five) the middle name of John, after my very nice uncle John who had recently died, but it did not seem very euphonious between Peter and Schinske. Neither did Johann or Johannes, so we finally settled on Jonathan, which is really not the same name at all, of course.<BR>
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Helen Schinske</FONT></HTML>